Wood Monitor Arm

Replicating monitor arm mechanics with springs / hardwood because I didn’t want to buy one (and ended up spending 10x the cost and time)

2019-2020, my freshman year at the University of California, Riverside. I was still an undeclared major trying to transfer into mechanical engineering so I had yet to take any of the engineering courses besides GEs.

At the end of Spring quarter right before finals, quarantine hit and everyone got sent home early. Quite happy at the time since finals was delayed or canceled outright and summer had come early, as it sounded like a temporary thing. I definitely didn’t expect it to last so long and drastically impact the rest of my college experience.

After I returned home, I decided to make a engineering project since I was itching to make something physical. Armed with no kinematic knowledge or sense of what was practical, I made a wooden monitor arm.

I had modeled up the monitor arm in SOLIDWORKS prior to manufacturing and made myself drawing templates as I learned back in high school. Quite handy reference. Then a bit of napkin paper kinematic solving for proper spring tension to support a 27in monitor (since I did not know that gas springs were typically used in arms)

I spent all summer cutting redwood sheets with a jigsaw and hand saw, gluing pieces together and hand sanding every piece down with sandpaper. No heavy machinery, just blood sweat and tears.

I remember spending so long sanding down the main arm sections to get it super smooth, leaving my hands baby smooth from the paper. Still proud of it to this day. I should find those pieces again from my parents garage and display it somewhere.

I used a wood stain to finish off the pieces which looked not bad to replicate expensive dark colored wood, but in a later project I used tung oil to bring out natural colors which I liked a lot better.

Once everything was done, I tested the arm with water bottles. Now since I did napkin math and I don’t have any engineering experience, I was afraid of my contraption breaking apart and sending the large springs and wood everywhere. A fair worry since I had to double up springs I bought from ACE hardware to they overlapped in a janky bowed manner, but nothing really happened at max capacity. Just a bit of creak from the metal-on-metal.

The water jugs did hold though. I was very impressed with myself. But did I actually use it as a monitor arm.

Nope

It was chunky af and heavy as hell. It did make a cool arm lamp concept